Remember the ample number of times you might have said something to your peers and they made a war out of it? As the saying goes, rumors spread like wildfires, these psychopaths cash upon this volatility of words. Once you say something, they will mould it in such a way that others will mislead you and misjudge you; this is such a way to defame you and make you seem cruel and harmful in front of others. You should be really very careful if you find such behavior. You can never fathom how they will do and what. All you will end up is being categorized as insensitive, cruel, mean, and similar to other epithets.
Controlling others
Narcissists always try to control others. They wouldn’t directly try to control you. First, they will try to isolate you from your family and friends. Once they have become successful in doing so, they will cash upon your vulnerability. Imagine a situation where people who meant a lot to you, people whom you were close to start misunderstanding you and even blaming you for no reason at all! You will lose your confidence and become extremely weak, emotionally. Now, the second step of these types of people will be to act like your closest person. They will make you believe that they are the ones who understand you and thereby, they will gain your trust and dependency. Once that’s done, they will indirectly tell you or rather you will be so weak yourself that you will ask them for their help and they will tell you exactly what they want you to do. In this way, they will gain full control over you and get things done.
Shifting away from the topic
One of the major narcissist diversion tactics is this. Narcissists or psychopaths will always move away from the topic of discussion if the topic is something they don’t like or it’s something that might reveal their true nature. They will do anything, perhaps crack a joke or cite an irrelevant example so that the primary topic of the discussion gets diluted.
Gaslighting – Manipulating reality in a way that will make you feel you are insane
Psychopaths will gaslight in such a way that you will feel the reality you believe in is something borne out of your imagination. They will distort facts and make you question your own understanding of the world. This might even drive you insane because you will stop having confidence in yourself if you believe in their version of reality.
Triangulation – Adding opinions of others to validate their point
True or not true, narcissists will always try to add more reference points to their opinions. They will bring opinions of other people to substantiate their point while arguing. Therefore, to you, it will seem that a lot of people are supporting their argument and hence you will get outnumbered. With these diversion tactics, you will be not able to figure out where did you go wrong but dwell on the idea that you are the one who is having the wrong notions.
Projection – Pointing out flaws
One of the ways of manipulating is pointing out others’ flaws. Psychopaths will always show flawed you are; they will make you believe that the negativities are there because of your shortcomings. They will go to the extent where you will start having the feeling that you need to rectify yourself while in reality, this is just their way to hide their own flaws.
We should always keep an eye on such people. These narcissists or psychopaths or anti-socials feed on our negative thoughts and lack of self-confidence. It’s only by staying positive always and having faith in us that we can save ourselves from such people.
